Nepenthe
by knee-high-socks-and-doctor-who
Summary: Eyes like fire. Hair like night. Skin like paper. Words so light. Her name is Nepenthe, but who is she? An amnesiac that is troublesome to the Nephilim community, and the strange familiar feeling that comes with Alec Lightwood is terrifying in many ways.
1. Away

"So fly away and leave it behind  
>Just stay awake, there's no where to hide<br>I see you cause you won't get out of my way  
>I hear you cause you won't quit screaming my name<br>I feel you cause you won't stop touching my skin  
>I need you- I'm coming to take you away"<p>

-Away by Breaking Benjamin

* * *

><p>I can't remember much.<p>

There's a bump on my head and I feel like I'm going to barf. Well, I'm sitting alone in a field of grass, so at least no one would get mad. I groan and clutch my head. I'm dizzy, really dizzy.

What's my name?

God, I can't remember.

I move to stand up, but I can't, and suddenly I'm not sitting in a field anymore. I'm sitting on a sidewalk, in front of a dilapidated church. But before I know it, its image is changing. Now it is a beautiful brand new church with gothic spires and gargoyles.

Where the hell have I been?

I stand up on shaky feet. My knees almost buckle but I straighten myself out before I can. Something in the back of my mind tingles as I look at the building before me, but I can't remember.

I look down at my arms and nearly start to cry. They're cut up and bleeding. How had I not noticed that before? My eyes tear up and I will myself to remember. My hair is long and straight, jet black that must be dyed. My T-shirt is ripped up, the words on the front unable to be read. It's black too, and my jeans are muddy and ripped and I look down curiously at my bare feet. The nails are painted silver, not a chip on them. Completely perfect.

"Nepenthe?"

I look up to see a girl that almost mirrors my image except for the clothes standing on the front steps of the church.

"Oh my gosh, it is you!" the girl runs forward and hugs me. "I should get you inside. What the hell happened? How'd you get like this?"

"I don't remember…" my hands are scraped up and I stare down at them.

"My stele's inside," she says. "I'll get you all healed up."

"Wait." I say as she tries to pull me towards the church. "Who are you?"

She pauses, staring at me. "You mean you don't remember? We were friends when we were little. You know, Maryse's daughter? Isabelle Lightwood?"

I shake my head. "Doesn't ring a bell."

"Oh," she says disappointedly. "I thought, you would remember." she straightens up. "Wait. What _can _you remember?"

"Nothing," I say. "What is my name?"

"Nepenthe," she says. "Nepenthe Glassgoode."

"Oh," I play with the hem of my shirt. "Where am I? what year is it?"

"It's- well, it's 2008. You're in New York City."

"May I come in?" I ask, looking past her at the towering gothic building.

"Yes," she says. "Come in, I'll help you, fix you up. I'll tell Hodge you're here." she grabs my firmly by the wrist and tugs me along to the front steps. We enter and go up a rickety old elevator and she leads me to a library.

Sitting at an oak desk is an aging old man. He looks about in his fifties or so. He looks up and practically does a double take. Isabelle and I look so much alike, it scares me.

"Who is this?" he pulls his glasses off the bridge of his nose.

"Nepenthe Glassgoode." Isabelle says. "I found her outside. She can't remember anything, Hodge."

"Oh," he says. There's something in his voice that alarms me, but I don't know what to think of it. "You can't remember _anything _Miss Glassgoode?"

I shake my head. "I woke up here. At first I thought I was in a field, but then I was on a sidewalk, and then-"

"Sounds like warlock mischief to me." he mutters. "They probably messed with your memory. Do you remember anything before waking up here?"

"No sir."

"Not a thing?"

"No," I shake my head. "Can I please just get cleaned up? I just, need to rest."

"You can stay here as long you like, Nepenthe. I'm going to call the Clave. They might know if you went missing." he mutters something else incoherently.

Isabelle takes me by the elbow and veers me into her room, and she kicks around some stray articles of clothing. She digs around in her drawers for a second, and then pulls out a clean pair of jeans and a white V-neck T-shirt. I go into the bathroom and change.

I study myself in the mirror. There's a dark purple bruise on my cheekbone underneath my left eye. I quickly put the clothes on and go back into Isabelle's room. She's gone.

I hear talking and some animated shouting down farther in the hallway. I peek my head out, and a boy with amber eyes and brass curls is leaning against the wall as Isabelle shouts something at him.

I clear my voice and Isabelle looks at me. "Oh! Sorry, Nepenthe. I didn't know were done." she comes over and takes my dirty beat up clothes. "Alright," she says. "Go get your stele Jace, I can't find mine. I need to fix up her arms there."

Jace rolls his eyes. "Yes your highness." he leaves.

"Sorry about that," she takes my arm in her steely grip, and I flinch. "That's my brother. He's a really stupid teenage boy if you hadn't noticed."

I stand a few inches shorter than Isabelle, and I stand on the tips of my toes to reach her height. She releases my arm and I follow back into the library. Hodge is gone.

"Sit down," she says coolly, pointing to an armchair. "Jace can put the runes on." she disappears for a few more minutes and then Jace enters.

"I heard you needed this?" he waves a silver writing utensil in front of me with a needle sharp tip.

"Yeah."

He comes over and sits down on the stool for the armchair across from me. He takes my arm, and I'm slightly surprised by the difference in his grasp compared to Isabelle's. His is soft and gentle, rather than firm and tight.

He traces a black mark on each of my arms and it burns, but it's a familiar burn. I wouldn't know why it's familiar because of the whole memory loss thing, but I don't flinch away from it.

When he finishes he pulls away, and I can't help but stare.

He gives me a quick half smile before leaving the room without a word. My arm tingles, and the cuts heal up quickly.

I'm about to get up and go find somebody when I stop dead as somebody walks into the room.

The wave of a memory washes over me.

* * *

><p>Wow, that was kind of crappy. This was a really random idea, thought of it like ten minutes ago. Review please!<p> 


	2. Blackout

"I'm only getting started  
>I won't blackout<br>This time I've got nothing to waste  
>Let's go a little harder<br>I'm on fire  
>I won't blackout<br>I'm on my way  
>I'm only getting started"<p>

-Blackout by Breathe Carolina

* * *

><p>My breath gets caught in my throat, and suddenly I'm not in the library anymore. The boy with the striking blue eyes and raven hair shrinks, down to the size of a child, and I do too. We look about the age of six, and we're out on the streets of a city I do not know. Glass skyscrapers hint along the horizon in the distance.<p>

"Nenthe! Over here!" I look back towards him again, and almost get hit in the face with one of the pigtails my hair is tied in because I jerked my head much too fast. It's still the same black from before. I guess it wasn't dyed.

He tosses something towards me, and it's a small stone that glows in the palm of my hand as I catch it.

"Witchlight," I say, and I realize that this must be a memory. For I don't know these things. "Where'd you get this?"

He shrugs bashfully. "It was my parents. I found it. It's cool isn't it? Gosh, I can't wait till they train us to kill demons."

My childish dimpled face falls, and I stare back down at the witchlight in my palm. _Kill._ This word isn't nice, and I know it.

"Why do we have to kill them?" I ask shrilly. "Why can't we just get along with them?"

"Because they're bad!" he says. "They hurt people, lots and lots of people." he looks toward the towers near the gate I can see not far off. "The demon towers protect us here though, but not until we learn to kill the demons for ourselves. And warlocks, and vampires, and werewolves—"

"They didn't do anything wrong!" I shout. "They're innocent."

"Not all of them," he whines. "They can be bad too."

But before I can say anything more, someone calls his name. "Alec! Alec get back in here! It's almost time for dinner." Alec smiles at me and takes the witchlight back. I let it go and watch him run off to his home, where it's safe and warm.

A sadness and fear washes over me, not wanting to run back home. I don't know why, but the fear grows stronger. I will myself to remember something, _anything _that would tell me where the fear was coming from.

But I find nothing, and the sound of a familiar voice shouts my name from a few houses over.

"Nepenthe! Nepenthe come inside. Your mother would like to talk to you!" it's in a sing-songy voice that sends chills down my spine and fear to pool in the pit of my stomach. My breath comes out in little gasps, and the setting sun, is suddenly so very daunting.

My breath hitches, and I answer with little hesitation. "Coming mama!"

* * *

><p>I'm sucked back into reality, and I stare back into the confused and slightly embarrassed blue eyes of Alec Lightwood. He just stands there, rigid as a board. I want to say something but my throat is completely dry and I can't speak.<p>

"What happened?"

"Um…" I clutch my throat as I find my voice. "I don't exactly know. You're Alec, right?"

He gives a stiff nod. "Of course. We were friends, when we lived in Alicante."

_Alicante._ So that's where we'd been. Where is Alicante? My mind is buzzing with thoughts and confusion, and I struggle to think straight. I choke on a few broken sentences before finally speaking.

"When did you leave Alicante?"

"When I was eight.*"

"Oh…" I look down at my bare feet. "I'm sorry, if I scared you at all. I don't know what happened."

"You passed out," he says bluntly, the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Does that happen every time you meet a guy?"

"No, thank god…" I look back up at him. "I managed to meet your brother without passing out."

His eyes hold a sort of sadness to them. "Most girls do, truthfully. With the whole, charming, good looks thing…"

"He didn't try to pull it on me," I say.

"He's kind of crabby today, I'm not sure why." he absently rubs the back of his neck. "I've heard through the grapevine that you're an amnesiac?"

"Your sister," I mutter through a cough, and he smiles. I don't know how I know that. "Yeah, I just woke up here without any memory whatsoever. Actually, I'm quite surprised you didn't do anything when I passed out."

A blush creeps up his cheeks. "I didn't know what to do. You just went all rigid and then you went slack, and then like ten seconds later you woke right back up. There wasn't much time to do anything."

It feels nice for some reason to have a normal conversation with someone. It warms my heart, and then suddenly fear and distrust taints it. Something tells me not to trust him, or anyone here. It tells me to run, go back to where I belong.

But where is that? Alicante? I don't know, and it's scaring me. Alec sees the look on my face, and I almost think he's going to come over and hug me or something. But he doesn't.

Before I can break the heavily awkward silence, Jace comes storming in. he rips some papers off the desk and tosses them at one of the bookshelves.

"Jace! What the hell are you doing?" Alec tries to calm Jace down, but he just knots his hands in his hair and kicks the desk.

"Let go of me!" he shoves Alec off. "That little bitch…" he's about to storm off again when I get up. I reach for him, and the second my skin touches his, he nearly leaps back.

It's like my skin is acidic, and he clutches the spot where I touched him. Something comes over him and he just stares at me. "What?" I ask. "What did I do?" There's no response, and he just stares at me.

"God, I gotta get out of here!" he storms off again, and my mind is even more confused than it was before. But the first thing that comes out of my mouth is:

"He _is _crabby today."

Alec busts out laughing. "Jeez, I know. What the hell's wrong with him anyways?"

I give a half smile, and am almost tempted to follow him. Deep down inside my core, some instinct tells me to pursue him. He's the enemy. No he's not. I ground myself, and take ahold of my mind, telling it it's being stupid. I'm a goddamn amnesiac after all.

"I'm hungry. Where can we eat?"

Alec gives me a blank stare. "Don't depend on Isabelle to cook anything, she ruins it all. There's Taki's—'

"That sounds good." I immediately say. "Go without Jace and Isabelle…?"

"Sure," he half smiles. "That sounds good."

* * *

><p>I'm not surprised at all by the people we see at the small diner. Something deep inside me tells me it's normal, and as I sit across from Alec I let my girly side take over. Butterflies flutter around in my stomach, and he nearly catches me staring at him a few times.<p>

I order some pancakes and an iced tea, and Alec gets a coffee. We sit in silence for a bit, before I ask him something.

"What is it like in Alicante?"

"It's nice," he muses, sipping his coffee. "It's bright, and intense, and there are the glass skyscrapers and the demon towers."

So I _was_ in Alicante when I'd experienced the memory. I remember the demon towers and the glass skyscrapers. I sip my iced tea and watch him as he put sugar into his coffee with a furrowed brow.

"That sugar giving you a hard time?" I ask. He looks up, and he rubs at the crease in between his brow.

"No," he sighs. "I've just been, through some hard times lately." the same sadness enters his eyes again like when I'd mentioned Jace. The puzzle pieces start to fit together.

"Well, so have I. I can't remember a damn thing and I'm stuck sitting with a cute boy I can never have in a freaky diner." he smiles at that. "So, what's new?"

I don't expect him to laugh, but he does. It surprises, and I join in. Our food comes and we eat, quietly without saying much.

I could get used to this.

* * *

><p>*= I really don't know if the Lightwoods ever lived in Alicante. I actually think they moved when Alec was just a baby, but I can't remember… So, don't hate cause I'm changing it to fit.<p>

This was a better chapter than the last one, longer too.

Review please!


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